Brand awareness can make your brand a household name or even an identity. Apple vs. Microsoft, Coke vs. Pepsi, Ford vs. Holden, Sega vs. Nintendo: brands can inspire loyalties and rivalries. A successful brand awareness strategy can turn your product into the shorthand for the product in general: the next Jet Ski, Kleenex, Tupperware or Band-Aids. When your brand name becomes such a widely-used everyday term, neither your new nor regular customers need to think twice when they’re searching for the solution you provide.
In marketing, “brand awareness” refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how recognisable you are in the marketplace. Brand awareness is no accident, and it shouldn’t be left to chance. The biggest brands in the world had and still have enormous brand awareness campaigns behind them. But you don’t need a multinational's budget to start building brand awareness. A powerful brand strategy includes a mix of different tools and tactics, many of which are easy and affordable.
Brand awareness builds trust in your company, raising your profile, your equity and your profits. But a brand awareness strategy needs to be focused and relevant—there’s no point reaching people if they’re not the people you’re looking for!
If you’re wondering how to measure brand awareness, Anchor can help. As a full-service creative marketing agency, we’ve helped many purpose-driven brands grow. Getting your branding right involves knowing your mission, your audience and the value that you bring. It also means knowing that those qualities are fluid and subject to change.
Brand Awareness Metrics
Brand awareness is measured using benchmarks that fall into two categories: quantitative and qualitative. In research, quantitative data is measurable and based on numbers, while qualitative data is descriptive and often open to interpretation. In the marketing world, this translates to quantitative data using methods like analytics and statistics, while qualitative data focuses more on the opinions and attitudes of respondents. Here are some of the most common brand awareness metrics for both types:
Quantitative metrics
Quantitative brand awareness metrics include the click-through rate (CTR), return on advertising spend (ROAS), website traffic, search volume data, and social media metrics.
Qualitative metrics
Qualitative brand awareness metrics include focus groups, interviews and surveys with open-ended questions.
How do you measure brand awareness? The most effective strategy is to use a combination of the best tools and techniques, and the two go hand in hand.
Tools to Measure Brand Awareness
Social media tools
Tracking your performance on social media is about more than looking up what people are saying about you online. Keeping track of who mentions your brand on social media and how many times gives you a pretty useful indication of your public image. Important factors to look into include how often your brand has been mentioned, whether the sentiments are positive or negative, and how likely your customers are to recommend your products. Social media tools like Hootsuite can help you see those analytics.
SEO tools
Tools like SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs can provide useful information, such as how often your brand is searched for each month, what countries the searchers are from, and what devices they’re searching with.
Brand mention tools
Brand mention tools like BrandMentions, BuzzSumo, Sprout Social, and HootSuite let you see what the public is saying about you in real time.
Brand awareness surveys
Surveys are one of the best brand awareness metrics out there to measure a quality that, by its nature, is challenging to measure. Brand awareness surveys give you an idea of your customers’ knowledge of and feelings towards your brand.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics can tell you the sources of traffic to your website, the demographics of users and their level of engagement.
Tactics for Measuring Brand Awareness
Earned media coverage
Earned media coverage, organic media coverage or third-party publicity—regardless of what you call it, it’s a reliable source of unbiased feedback, and it won’t cost you anything. Using a social listening or brand tracker tool, you can see how many mentions your brand is getting on other websites and what the word on the street is.
Social listening
When people talk about you online, social media is one of the first places they’ll do it. Social listening tools let you glean valuable insights from social media conversations, and like all tools, they have different strengths. While one tool may give you an in-depth insight into some of the sentiments surrounding your business, another may be more focused on trends.
Search data
Examining the data your customers and potential customers type into search engines is another valuable strategy. Google Trends data does more than just tell you who’s searching for your brand name. It tells you how your current traffic compares to several months ago or where interest rises and falls throughout the year. This information can prove useful when you’re planning marketing campaigns.
Referral traffic
Referral traffic and backlinks show you how many people land on your site via external links from other websites. If other sites link to you regularly, it shows that other people are talking about your brand and value what you bring to the table. Measuring the metrics from social media sites, news websites, or blogs gives you an idea of your impact on the wider web and the public.
Content marketing performance
Content marketing builds brand awareness: there’s no doubt about that. Now, you can use it as a metric to measure it, too. Factors like your number of unique viewers, the time they spend on your page, your return visitors and your bounce rate will give you a fairly detailed insight into the impact of your brand strategy.
How to Improve Your Brand Awareness
Regardless of the state of your current campaigns or the strength of your brand awareness strategy, there are always ways to increase your reach. Here are some tips to grow your brand and bring your services to a fresh audience:
Know yourself
What does your brand look like, sound like, and stand for? The clearer you are about your brand identity, the more effectively you can share it with the world. This includes assets like your brand voice, brand values, logo, and tagline.
Tell your story
Every brand has a story, and sometimes, a tale about overcoming adversity is more compelling than just a checklist of successes. Your brand identity tells the world who you are and what you stand for, as well as your gifts and values. It’s your story, and, like all stories, it needs to be consistent to be fully believable.
Create content that goes above and beyond
When you offer value beyond your standard services and products, you grow your brand awareness and your perceived credibility. You can’t always predict what will go viral, but creating content that provides useful information and focuses on solving people’s problems will put you ahead in the game.
Run contests
The occasional social media giveaway can be an effective way to raise brand awareness and get your product in front of more people. Competition concepts like “leave a caption to win,” “like and share,” and “tag a friend” spread awareness and boost engagement.
Collaborate with creators and other brands
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s probably an influencer or content creator making waves with your target demographic and taking advantage of social media’s popularity and reach. Working with influencers and other brands is a creative and lively way to grow your own.
Post regularly
76% of local businesses use social media as part of their marketing strategy, with more than 40% relying on it to help drive revenue. Regular posting means better brand awareness and keeps your existing followers more engaged.
Improve and Measure Your Brand Awareness with Anchor
As a hybrid creative marketing agency helping purpose-driven businesses grow, Anchor can provide you with a brand strategy that solidifies everything your brand stands for and a marketing strategy that shares it with the world.
Anchor understands the differences between brand identity and brand strategy and how to approach each one most effectively. We anchor every campaign in a solid strategy backed by timeless principles that can keep pace with industry changes.
Anchor can help you become even greater at what you do and share it even more widely with the world. Drop us a line and let’s work together.
